


Desert Dreams

by von_gikkingen



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, Jabba's Palace (Star Wars), Mos Pelgo (Star Wars), Twi'Lek Slavegirl, chapter 16 post credit scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28272105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/von_gikkingen/pseuds/von_gikkingen
Summary: “There were two of them. I only glanced the man for a moment. I was on my way out. I don’t know what possessed me,” she says, her words growing shaky as she takes another sip of water. “My feet wanted to run but... something was telling me to look. To see what I was leaving behind.”“And what was that?” asks the marshal, his voice softly coaxing.“Someone else sitting on Bib Fortuna’s throne.”A tear runs down her cheek but she smiles as she says the words, her expression almost fierce. He got what he deserved, her dark eyes tell us without her ever having to say a word.
Relationships: Boba Fett & Fennec Shand, Cobb Vanth/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 11





	Desert Dreams

He doesn’t even have to say anything. The look on his face tells me all I need to know.

The Tuskens were back. And it might be a friendly visit, one they were paying us to reaffirm the bond between our people we built the day we fought that monster together – or it might mean something else entirely. He wouldn’t know until I told him.

How unfortunate that only I among all the citizens of Mos Pelgo knew how to repeat those harsh sounds of their tongue. Not that I minded being the person that kept misunderstandings from destroying this still so fragile truce between us and the masked natives. No, what I minded were all those times when I had to interpret for those who, for reasons of their own, never came near the town. All those trips out into the sands that often took days and found me returning to a town full of knowing smiles and suggestively wiggling eyebrows. And envy. Because what would some of the local women – and men for that matter too – give to trade places with me. To be able to accompany the marshal on his forays into the desert. To be there when the suns set and the sands turned cold and one needed to keep warm by any means necessary...

I met their smirks and comments with amusement whenever I could manage and with eyerolls all the rest of the time. It never seemed quite as funny to me as it did to others. Not that the marshal wasn’t a good looking man. I knew no one who could claim otherwise while keeping a straight face. But no one who wasn’t out there after dark could have imagined why those thoughts were the furthest thing from my mind.

It has been a different world out there, in the barren wilderness that seem an unfit place for anyone to live. Nothing but sand and starlight – and the darkness among the dunes called to the darkness within, making the strangest thoughts arise in one’s mind. Cold, unpleasant thoughts with sharp edges that kept me from losing myself in something as simple and reassuring as lust. No, no matter how many opportunities I got, I really didn’t think I was going to find myself making any advances.

“I don’t think it’s anything bad,” Vanth says, trying to assure me even as he heads right for the nomads.

Once they were the boogeymen of my childhood, used by my parents to scare me into behaving. But that was then and this was now – after years put grey strands into my hair and their masks no longer held the power to scare me. I open my mouth, mimicking the sounds I heard them make many times as best as I can. My vocal cords straining in a way that just stops short of painful as I ask them what was it that brought them to our town.

Whatever I imagined the answer would be their reply makes me wonder if I’m getting things lost in translation. Because what they’re telling me...

“What is it?” asks the marshal, not missing the uncertain look on my face.

“They found someone. Lost in the desert,” I reply, wondering what exactly they mean by the strange gesture they accompany the words with. It takes me another repetition of the motion before I understand. “A Twi’Lek, I think,” I add, now nearly certain that the way one of the Tusken’s gestures around the back of his head is meant to represent lekku.

“What?”

Which is a very good question and one I’m asking myself. But the nomads aren’t done just yet and I find myself repeating their words in my next breath. “They want to know if we’ll take her in. She’s very weak. She might not survive if she doesn’t get help from someone who knows how to treat her kind.”

“Where did they find her?”

“They didn’t. It was another clan,” I say, moving my hands in a quick gesture, letting the man behind the scary mask know I need him to slow down and repeat what he just said. “But they all agree that she should live.”

I frown, struggling with the idea. I didn’t see how these people would find any respect for someone who got lost in the desert.

Not until they tell me _where_ they found her.

Not until they tell me what was around her ankle...

“Get your speeder,” I say, my voice startlingly commanding. If Vanth is taken aback, well, so am I. I never expected to find myself giving orders around here, least of all to him. But what I’ve just been told, the story it all suddenly added up to... “I’m going to tell them we will be proud to welcome her among us. That we’re heading out right now, to retrieve her and bring her here.”

“We are...?” frowns the marshal. “Why?”

“Because they found her out in the Dune Sea. Less than two day’s walk from Jabba’s palace,” I say, repeating for him what our Tusken friends just told me. “She wore a shackle with a length of chain still attached to it...”

...

Mos Pelgo being what it was – a very long way from anywhere one might want to visit, that is – it takes us three days spent on our speeders with only the briefest, most necessary breaks. Three days and two nights between them that I yet again completely fail to take an advantage of. And maybe anyone else in my position would but me, I simply wasn’t presumptuous enough to assume he’d be interested. Never mind that I had other things on my mind.

We knew what we were headed towards, both of us, knew it before we were even done getting all the information from our friendly neighbourhood Tuskens. We might have had no explanation as to how would some skinny little slavegirl manage to free herself and slip unnoticed out of that ominous old fortress – but we knew that was the only thing she could have been. A runaway. Someone who must have been through things no one should have to live through, willing to take her chances in the desert rather than spend another moment among those walls.

She’s the one that occupies my thoughts, days and nights, as we head ever further into the dunes. There might be more pleasant ways to spend those dark hours but they’re the furthest thing from my mind.

What I’m headed towards seems far more important than who is by my side while I’m traversing the distance. And when hours go by without either of us speaking it’s hard to remember I’m not alone here, only me and the endless sands and just as endless sky. Harsh winds tangled in my hair and somewhere in the distance a lost girl with a story to tell.

...

“There were two of them. I only glanced the man for a moment. I was on my way out. I don’t know what possessed me,” she says, her words growing shaky as she takes another sip of water. “My feet wanted to run but... something was telling me to look. To see what I was leaving behind.”

“And what was that?” asks the marshal, his voice softly coaxing.

“Someone else sitting on Bib Fortuna’s throne.”

A tear runs down her cheek but she smiles as she says the words, her expression almost fierce. _He got what he deserved_ , her dark eyes tell us without her ever having to say a word.

“You said there were two?” I ask when I see her expression shift, see her retreat into her own thoughts. She nods, glancing at me. Reassured by whatever is she sees she starts telling us the rest.

The words startle us and neither of us is able to hide that. It is easy enough to believe that someone else claimed the fortress that was for so long a dwelling place of the worst villains that ever set foot on Tatooine. Monsters replaced by other monsters – what difference did that make to the rest of us?

But that was not what she was telling us, was it? Because the couple that now resided in that faraway place, they were no indiscriminate killers. If they were there would be no one to tell the tale...

“She had a clear shot. She was only few steps away, there was no way she could have missed me. She _chose_ to shoot through the chain instead. She let me go,” says the Twi’Lek, her eyes glancing down to her bandaged ankle that has been rubbed raw under the weight of the metal that still encircled it when she left the palace. It was only after the Tuskens have found her, badly sunburned and half-delirious with thirst, that the last remnant of her days of slavery had been removed. “ _She let me go_ ,” she repeats, speaking to me alone, desperately willing for me to understand.

A phrase enters my thoughts as I hold her eyes, unable to look away from all the raw emotion I see in their dark depths. I say the words, softly, under my breath, unable to keep them from slipping past my lips.

“Life debt,” she repeats, nodding her head softly. “I never understood what that meant. I think I do now.”

“You were shown kindness. That’s all,” says the marshal, interrupting before she might add anything else. “You owe your life to no one.”

He’s not wrong and I think our new friend knows it too. Still I have to wonder – if there ever comes a day when their paths cross again, if there ever is something she might be able to do for that woman in black who made body after body fall to the floor, lifeless, until she turned her weapon on the desperate slave pulling at her chain with all her strength... Will she know how to refuse? Will she remember that she owed her life to no one...?

The marshal is talking again, making promises I really wish he’ll be able to keep. And the truth is if it wasn’t him I’d be the one saying those words. Telling her of the place we’ll start heading for tomorrow, as soon as the first sun has risen. Of the place that maybe, in time, she will be able to think of as home.

“Is it far from here?” she asks, frowning softly.

“It’s far from everywhere. Nothing will follow you to Mos Pelgo,” I tell her. “It can’t. It’s not on any maps...”

I smile and when she smiles in reply I know – she’s going to be just fine. It will take time for her to heal but heal she will.

She was a survivor.

...

“You’re thinking about her again?”

The words catch me in the dark hours as I’m slipping from one dream into a next. They might be a part of one for all I know. Or maybe I’m close enough to the edge of sleep for the words to be nothing less than what my travelling companions are sharing while I’m lost in slumber.

“I am,” I hear, the soft voice of the lost girl we’re bringing home.

“Your woman in black,” comments the marshal, his words light and betraying no judgement.

“No,” she replies. “Not mine. I’d like to believe she doesn’t belong to anyone. Someone like that shouldn’t. If a woman like that can’t be free what hope is there for any of the rest of us...?”

“Now what makes you say that?”

I may not be able to see him but I still know what frown-lines mark his face as he says the words. Genuine curiosity behind that question, too, or at least that’s what I hear there.

“Sometimes you can just tell. When someone belongs to someone else even if there are no chains to keep it that way,” she says, her words low, almost at the edge of whisper. There is a silence for a moment and then I hear her add, “She was the one pulling the trigger, but he took the throne. That told me all I needed to know. Whoever he is she’s _his_ woman in black.”

I almost lose myself in dreams again, the silence between them lasts so long. But I am still clinging to waking when more words come at last.

“I wonder when it gets dark. When I can’t sleep. I wonder if she can. What are her dreams like and if her bed is comfortable and... I just... wonder,” says the girl softly and I can feel myself smiling in my sleep, mirroring the smile I know must be on her face as she says the words.

After that I hear nothing else. What words drift through my dreams are like the soft desert winds, pleasant but devoid of meaning.

I dream of chains, their links covered in writing, with promises that tell me that the cold metal I’m holding in my hands is a life debt. A chain there is no breaking. The realization it’s not as heavy as I thought it would be makes me snap awake, still in the dark...

“Bad dream?”

“A strange one,” I reply even before I turn in the direction his voice is coming from. “Do you ever have...” I let out a breath, uncertain about how to phrase it so that he understands. “Do the dreams you have out here ever seem... different? Different to the ones you have when you’re spending the night between walls rather than under open sky...”

“They do,” he replies, never having to think about it. “Yes, I have had some strange dreams out in the desert.”

I nod to myself, feeling more reassured than I thought possible by that simple admission from him. But he’s not done talking, I don’t think. Something in his eyes tells me to stay quiet and wait. A whole minute passes before he speaks again and his tone is distant and dreamy.

“The man on the throne – she said he wore an armour. That there was a helmet over his face. I dreamt of that man tonight. He wore my beskar as he sat on his throne. It looked _right_ on him, the way it never did on me.”

I smile despite myself. “It looked good on you and you know it,” I say before I can think better of it.

He just looks at me – for just a moment too long, making me regret all those nights we spent each lost in our own dreams and shivering with the cold we could have so easily banished if only we reached out to each other in the dark. But those nights were gone and nothing was bringing them back. “You know what I dream about when I’m alone in the desert?”

It’s not a real question. I know what he’s going to tell me and I know it’s not some cheap pick up line either, but simply the truth. It’s written all over his face so clearly that I can’t believe I’ve never seen it before.

“You. The way you look in your sleep.”

I don’t know what he means by that and know better than to ask. He’d tell me and that would be the end of me.

I’ll ask him tomorrow, when we’re back in town and both suns are high in the sky. Without the help from the late hour and the strange emotions the dreams have left behind maybe what he’d tell me will be nothing but words. They might be spoken by a remarkable man with eyes one could get so very easily lost in, but they would be only words. Not some chain that might bind me to him forever...

We say nothing more as the last hour of the night passes and the stars start to fade. I rouse the Twi’Lek so we can start the last part of our journey. We’ll find home different people than we were when we left it but there’s nothing we can do about that now.

...

The fact we’re bringing a stranger with us spares me the usual winks and innuendos at least. I really don’t know how well I would have taken anything of the kind after this particular trip.

I’m far too unsettled not to snap at the first person that tries to pry into how I spent my last few nights. The suns seem too bright to my eyes and everything is just a little off, the sounds, the colors, the smells. Mos Pelgo hadn’t changed and I want to believe that neither did I. It’s not possible for only a few words spoken during that cold, dark hour when the morning seems both moments away and impossibly distant, to follow me all the way home. To threaten to stay with me for hours, days, to haunt me, always.

I force myself to turn my eyes to the Twi’Lek instead. To find some reassurance in what I saw in her face as she was welcomed as though she already was one of us. But watching her means being reminded of what she represents, this solitary survivor of something we couldn’t hope to understand. A story that was yet to unravel. And it might never affect our lives at all – or it might change everything for us before we know it. There was no telling. Not if all we had to guide us in our understanding of those distant events were strange, desert dreams.

“You’ve been quiet since you came back,” comes a familiar voice as a hand descends on my shoulder. And when I turn to face this old friend I see more worry than amusement in her expression. “What – did something finally happen?”

“No,” I sigh, saying nothing more. Because no, nothing happened. _Yet_.

But it was going to.

If I dared to look at the marshal now I knew I’d catch him watching me. Unspoken question in his dark eyes. Not that he didn’t already know the answer. Wasn’t that what he read in my face on all those nights among the dunes, as he watched over me while I slept...?

“Who do you think they are anyway?” my friend asks, pretending she doesn’t see the strange mix of emotions on my face. “The new rulers...”

I catch myself smiling at the way she phrased that. “I think that throne is only big enough for one,” I point out.

“Oh? Is that what you think?” she grins. “Because _I think_ neither of us ever been inside the place so what do we know, really...?”

It’s a good point, really, and so I find myself with nothing to say to her. And as she draws me into a conversation I just about manage to forget. But then she asks me just the wrong question and I hear myself reply, “Can’t. Already have plans.”

“You do?” she frowns, confusion written all over her face.

“She does.”

I never saw him move but here he is, a smile on his face and his hand on my waist in a gesture that is as possessive as it is welcome. And what can I possibly say to that? Is there any arguing with that smile...?

...

In stark contrast to every unjustified insinuation that has come before no one comments on what is happening now. Pretending they don’t see us go, most of them. Acting like there is nothing at all unusual about the way we hurry towards my house, making it blatantly obvious what we’re going to do the moment the door closes behind us...

Night is a long way away and so I can’t mistake this for just another strange dream the desert conjured up in my mind. This is as real as things get, every touch, every moan and sigh, every last sensation he wakes in me. Real and so long overdue, this moment. The inevitability of it feels almost fated but I never bother to share that thought with him. There’s no time, not even the briefest moment to utter those few words. We’re rushing towards the only conclusion this could ever have – our bodies entwined between the sheets, lost in one another, in the finally fulfilled promise of what we can be.

Had I ever had a dream that came even closer to this? No, I really don’t think I did. My imagination never stretched that far, not even when guided by whatever strange spell lies on the desert.

He’s no dream. Not something that will fade on waking, never to be recaptured. I know as much just by the way he says my name when his sun-kissed skin meets mine. He’s here to stay...

...

It’s late, almost nearing morning, and I know that as little as I want for it to be true I’m going to be the one to have to ask.

It was the decision I made when I told her my house has an extra bedroom she’s welcome to stay in. I knew this was what I was agreeing to when I made the offer – late nights and early mornings, sleep broken by cries coming from my guest’s room. Sounds of bad memories returning in nightmares, time and again, tormenting her by making her forget she escaped that place. That everyone who ever laid hands on her between those walls was dead now...

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask after waiting long seconds for her register my presence in the doorway. I don’t want to startle her. Don’t want to add to the fear I see on her face.

“Do you think she’s alright?”

The question takes me by surprise. A long second passes while I try to puzzle it out but in the end I understand without her needing to explain. The woman in black. That’s who she’s talking about.

The person responsible for her freedom.

“It’s nearly four in the morning. How much trouble she could get herself into at this hour?” I say, entering the room and sitting down at the end of her small bed.

“That’s what I was thinking,” she says and smiles. It’s a small thing, that smile, but it looks reassuringly real. “I wonder where she sleeps. If she has an eastern view so she can wake up to the light of the first sun. The desert looks golden on clear mornings. It’s almost beautiful...”

I stay quiet, having nothing to say to that. And that’s not really what I’m here for, is it? I’m here to listen. To sit hear and nod encouragements as she tells me what’s on her mind. Whatever she conjures to banish the darkness that has come before...

“I wonder if she sleeps alone,” she says, her expression growing distant and dreamy. “I wish I’d know what kind of man he was. But the helmet... I couldn’t see his eyes.”

This genuinely worries her, I know. I see it written all over her face as her eyes wonder all around the small room, not really seeing me.

She talks on, asking questions she doesn’t expect me to answer. Wondering, always wondering, about what she left behind. The two strangers that were the best thing that ever happened to her within the walls of the old palace. The two killers she couldn’t help but associate with freedom...

I sit at the end of her bed and listen, soft, earnest words spoken just above a whisper. Before long she has me asking the same questions. Wondering. It’s a late hour, one most people spend lost in dreams. Are _they_? Dreaming whatever dreams plague the nights of people like them...?

“I just... hope she’s alright,” says the Twi’Lek softly. I nod and wait, expecting more. “I can still see her eyes. She wasn’t... unkind. You know? She saw me. Actually saw me. I was a person to her.”

“There’s your answer then. How can her sleep be anything but untroubled?” I say and the words seem to reassure her.

In moments she’s drifting off to sleep again. Whatever dreams may lurk just under her eyelids, she seems unafraid of facing them. Brave girl. How can we be anything but better off for having her among us...?

I leave her room minutes later, after I’m certain she’s asleep. Returning to my own bed that seems too big and far too empty now. There are only shadows to keep me company in this bleak hour. Shadows and a promise of dreams.

I slip between the sheets, finding little warmth, and as I close my eyes I wonder. Wonder about the woman in black and the man she’s bound to, by a chain that cannot be seen and cannot be broken. I wish her a restful night, I do – but I wish for the miles and miles of sand to keep on separating us from her. Because who’s to say what trouble she might bring our way if her path ever crosses ours...

No, we’re better off in our separate worlds, only ever meeting in dreams. Losing one another in waking as soon as the suns rise to once again turn the sands gold.


End file.
